1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus for fabricating a disk, such as a magnetic recording disk used in a computer hard disk having surfaces textured by exposure to a pulsed laser, and, more particularly, to means for controlling independent left and right materials handling sub-systems, together with a single texture processing sub-system, within such apparatus.
2. Background Information
Current hard disk drives use a Contact Start-Stop (CSS) system allowing a magnetic head, used to read and write data, to contact the surface of a magnetic disk in a specific CSS region when the disk is stationary. Thus, before the rotation of a spinning disk has stopped, the magnetic head is moved to the CSS region, where the magnetic head settles on the surface of the disk. When the disk again starts to rotate, the magnetic head slides along the disk surface in this region, until the laminar air flow at the disk surface, due to its rotation, fully lifts the magnetic head from the disk surface.
After the magnetic head is lifted in this way, it is moved from the CSS region to another region of the disk to read and write data. The CSS region is preferably textured to minimize physical contact between the magnetic head and the disk surface. In this way, the contact stick-slip phenomenon often called "stiction" and other frictional effects are minimized, along with the resulting wear of the magnetic head surface. Outside the CSS region the remainder of the disk surface preferably retains a specular smoothness to permit high-density magnetic data recording.
In the area of sub-system control, the conventional methods for controlling multiple sub-systems employ either a central control processor and software to control all sub-systems, or a master supervisory control software, running in a master supervisory control processor, to control other software and processor sub-systems.